Here’s a quick look back at some bits of this year’s festival. Thanks to everyone who helped make it happen, the Courthouse, all our excellent presenters and of course you, the people who came.
And so on to 2024, starting with our first Science Café on Thursday March 14th. You can find all our dates for the year on our calendar page here.
Another great, packed Festival week with top speakers on diverse topics (family show Ultimate Dinosaurs; When the Antarctic Was Green with the Director of the British Antarctic Survey; an exploration of Roman medicine and BBC Science presenter Adam Rutherford on Control about eugenics), another Science Quiz (with food option), a Science Café, and something different – a Friday evening introduction to cheese science, with tasting!
Plus our popular, family oriented, free Science Fair (Saturday 10-4) is bigger than ever, overflowing into the Bridge Church and Otley Library.
All the info you need in on the Festival 2023 page
We’ve been working at it for quite a while and now have confirmed another great line up for this, our 15th Science Festival.
Once again we have a set of great speakers on diverse topics, another Science Quiz (with food option), a Science Café, and something different – a Friday evening introduction to cheese science, with tasting! Plus, of course, a series of daytime schools shows.
In addition the popular Science Fair (Saturday 18th) will be bigger than ever – we have expanded into an additional venue, the nearby Bridge Church, to provide more space for activities, stalls and workshops. Not to be missed!!
You can find the full schedule here on the Festival 2023 page. As we write there are a few session details to be added, plus we’re not yet selling tickets. But watch this space and all will be complete soon 🙂
We’ve been working on this year’s Science Festival for quite a while and can now share the shape of the week, beginning Monday 14th November.
This is how it looks:
In addition, running over Tuesday to Thursday evening between 6pm and 7pm we will have a guided book reading by Greg Radick. The book is Charles Darwin’s ‘The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals’.
As well as these public events there will be events for schools (KS1 and KS2) running Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday daytimes. Home schoolers are welcome to join these.
Full details of the shows, prices and booking information will be added to the web site shortly.
An evening of fascinating science on a warm summer evening…
Is this the “back to normal” year? Here’s hoping!
Our first contribution is the March Science Café, 7.30pm on Thursday March 24th.
Have a look at our poster. So much going on we couldn’t fit it all in!
As well as what’s on the poster we have Marty Jopson’s Mobile Teardown on Monday 15th; Festival Science Café on Tuesday 16th; Sarah Bearchell’s Cloud Factory (for the younger audience, 2 – 5s) on the afternoon of Wednesday 17th and the return of our Science Quiz that evening.
Plus a bonus event on Wednesday 24th November, an opportunity to tour Sinclairs’ world famous paper stationery factory! Hidden in the backstreets of Otley, with a history back to 1837 but today making millions of school exercise books, notebooks and sketchpads. The tour is free but numbers are very limited.
Sad to report update: Thursday evening’s “Being You” with Anil Seth has been cancelled due to circumstances beyond our control.
Full details of the whole Festival and ticket booking can be found on the Festival 2021 page.
Plus there is an extensive programme of events for junior schools (and home educators) which can be found here.
The mid-summer blended format Science Café came and went in June, along with a bit of good weather. Now, as we write, restrictions have been lifted so (with scientific fingers crossed) September’s Science Café will be going ahead just like they used to in the “good old days”.
We have the usual great line up of speakers covering “Covid-19 vaccines – access, equality and success”; “Pachyderms, parrots and Polynesian tree snails” and “Why BUY? The science behind consumer behaviour”. Find out all about it on the Science Café page.
We look forward to seeing you there!
As 2021 progresses and things are looking promising we are getting on with planning a full Science Festival week for November, based on the premise that life will be reasonably back to “normal”. Of course we will keep a close watch on developments and be prepared to adapt if necessary but for now we are pushing ahead with a full week of events in Otley Courthouse for our dates of November 15th – 20th.
We already have several excellent speakers planned (details will follow as soon as we can) and, after how popular it was last year, we thought we’d go for another Science Quiz. Saturday’s Science Fair planning is under way, with a number of new ideas being explored to make it better than ever. Watch this space!
But of course you don’t have to wait until then. Unless something disappointing happens we’ll be back in Otley Courthouse on June 17th for our first in person Science Café since March 2020. This time, though, we are also learning from the last year and you’ll be able join by Zoom as an alternative, if you can’t (or don’t wish to) join us there.
You can find all the details here on the Science Café page
Wecome back!
We may not have escaped our restrictions yet, but we still have a great Science Café lined up for Thursday March 18th. As we anticipated, it will be on-line only but we have an excellent line up of speakers and tickets are only £5 per household. Full details on the Science Café page or you can go straight to book your ticket from Otley Courthouse here.
Otley Science Festival 